From the Editor

In the Linux Journal 1997
Buyer's Guide, SSC announced the formation of
GLUE—Groups of Linux Users Everywhere. GLUE was implemented to
provide a world-wide member group for Linux User Groups. Since
three months have passed, I felt an update would be in order.
Complete information about the advantages to GLUE membership can be
found at its web site, http://www.ssc.com/glue/.

Lydia Kinata, SSC Product Specialist, tells me there has been
a good response to GLUE from both user groups and vendors. At the
time I talked to her (May 1), SSC was in the process of setting up
an e-mail list server for use by the groups. Lydia was particularly
excited about the decision by Enhanced Software Technologies to
provide a free copy of the BRU 200 Backup and Restore Utility to
each GLUE member group, as well as a 10% discount on the BRU
software to individual members of the user groups. Enhanced
Software (http://www.estinc.com/) is located in Tempe, Arizona and
recently became a corporate member of Linux International.

London Times

As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, in April The
London Times printed an article by David Hewson 1 which
trashed Linux and the “geeks” who use it. I just reread that
article to determine if I needed to respond to it in some way.
Frankly, after reading through phrases like “nasty piece of
digital scurf”, “that old computer donkey known as Unix” and “a
certain breed of bug-eyed computer user”, I was laughing too much
to take it seriously. However, I did find the notion of “Bill
Gates quivering in his boots at the idea that Linux will ... kick
Microsoft Windows off the everyday desktop” rather appealing. At
any rate I found Hewson's rantings amusing and, most certainly,
nothing to incite a flame war. (The Sunday
Times - 20 April 1997, Sounding Off: Linux,
the PC Program from Hell, by David Hewson,
http://www.the-times.cp.uk/news/pages/resources/libraryl.n.html?1032133.)

New Printer

From January of 1996 through June of 1997 Linux Journal has been printed by R. R. Donnelly in Senatobia,
Mississippi. Beginning with last month's issue, it is now printed
by Century Publishing in Post Falls, Idaho. One reason we made this
change was to have a printer in the same time zone. More
importantly, we wanted a printer closer to us so that we could
reduce the lead time in producing the magazine. Century fit both
these needs. Century is also known to us: Century was the first
printer for Linux Journal, and SSC has
continued to use them for printing the SSC catalog.

The new subscriber will be the main beneficiary of the
shorter lead time—he'll get his first issue sooner. Other benefits
will include later deadlines for articles and advertising
materials.

We believe this change to be a positive move on our part and
look forward to a long and harmonious working relationship with
Century.

Coming Up

Our next couple of issues will be focusing on
Education and Training Using Linux and
Linux as a Development Platform. We'll round
out the year with another Graphics and
Multimedia issue, then focus on System
Administration in December. We have a lot of good
articles being written for the first three, but commitments for
system administration articles are lagging. So, I'd like to remind
all you authors that we keep a “wish list” of articles on our web
site, http://www.ssc.com/lj/wanted.html. Check it out, and if you
find one you're interested in, write us at ljeditor@linuxjournal.com.

For some time now, we have wanted to run a cartoon each
month. Although we have someone who can draw cartoons, he knows
nothing about Linux. Send your favorite one-line Linux jokes to
linux@ssc.com, and if we can, we'll turn them into cartoons.